Crystals
by misslucy21
Summary: “Are you really going home or are you going to just drive around?”


Crystals

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_Disclaimer: Yeah, nope, not mine_

_Post ep to "Wannabe". It's got the stupidest title ever, but sometimes the good ones just don't come. Sorry about that._

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"So, uh, what happens now?"  
  
"Well, you go home, get some rest, and you come back to work."  
  
Home, rest. Two concepts that weren't flying right now for him. Part of him wanted to stay at work and bury himself in the paperwork that was undoubtedly sitting on his desk. Part of him just wanted to go away, just drive until he passed out at a rest stop somewhere. But right now, what little foreword momentum he'd had this week had just deserted him and he was sitting in front of his locker staring at the suit hanging off the front of it.  
  
"Hey, I hear you're having a hell of a week." A familiar voice jerked him out of his reverie in time to stop him from jumping out of his skin as Calleigh sat down next to him on the bench.  
  
"How the hell did you find out?" he asked, tiredly. It was a stupid question- the whole lab knew about his latest not so little screw-up.  
  
"Alexx," she replied simply.  
  
"Mmm," he said.  
  
She studied him. If you asked any CSI in the lab what were the top five worst scenes to show up at, virtually every one of them would give the same answer. First would be anything involving child molestation, abuse or murder. Second would be anything on the beach. Third would be anything that came floating up in the canals. Fourth would be any body dump without any real indication where the primary scene was. And the fifth would be a high profile or a professional job, because you knew you could do everything perfectly and your perpetrator could still walk. But Calleigh knew she'd rather have Tim go on each and every one of those calls than send him on a suicide call. They made him twitchy and weird. Well, weirder than usual. "It's not your fault," she said, finally.  
  
He didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to hear that he'd done a good job. Of course it was his fault. "I'm going home," he said, standing up and moving his suit so he could get into his locker.  
  
She watched him unhook his gun and put it on the top shelf of the locker and pull his bag out of the bottom. "Are you really going home, or are you just going to drive around aimlessly?" she asked. His shoulders jerked, so she knew he'd heard her, but he didn't respond. He started putting things in his bag, instead. "That shirt's too big for you," she commented after a moment.  
  
"It's the same size as all the rest of my shirts," he replied, irritably.  
  
"They're all too big for you," she said quietly. He stopped just as he was about to put his dress shoes in his bag. He just stood there for a moment, holding his shoes. "Calleigh?" he said finally.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Did you always want to do this?" he asked, still not looking at her.  
  
She shrugged, even though he couldn't see. "Not always. I wanted to design guns, first. But, there's not a lot of call for that sort of thing, and well, cops get guns and they get to use the shooting range. And they do good things, you know? And then I wound up doing ballistics, and that's when I figured out what I wanted to do."  
  
"Oh," he said.  
  
"You didn't answer my question," she said.  
  
"What?" he asked, confused.  
  
"Are you really going home or are you going to just drive around?"  
  
"I don't know." He shoved his shoes into his bag, spurred into motion again.  
  
"Why don't you come and get something to eat?" she asked, standing up.  
  
"I'm not hungry," he muttered, his hand on his locker door.  
  
"Yeah, but I am. And your shirt is too big," she said. When he didn't answer, she sighed. "Look, I'll make you a deal. You come and eat with me and I'll leave you alone to go ahead and drive around town."  
  
He closed his eyes. "Ok"  
  
"Ok?" she asked. He nodded. "Ok. Let me get my stuff."

She'd coaxed him into ordering scrambled eggs, but he was playing with them instead of eating. He had managed to eat a triangle of toast and taken a couple of bites out of a second piece, though. She wasn't pushing him to eat, and he was glad. He wasn't at all hungry. She'd tried to get him to laugh by describing the giant anthill she'd had to dig through to find a lotto ticket, but that hadn't worked either. He had smiled a little, though, and it seemed to satisfy her enough to let him sit and play with his eggs and look out the window while she ate her French toast.  
  
"What are you thinking?" she asked. She was tired of watching him play with his food and wanted to know whether he'd really be ok to leave alone. Tonight wasn't really the night to let him go wandering around town alone if his head wasn't with him. There were people out there who could figure out who the CSI on the Fisch case had been. And enough of those people could spot Tim if he went driving into the wrong places, which she knew he'd been known to do. He shrugged. She sighed. "Tim, look. What should you have done? You were 150 feet away from the kid. There's a reason why we've got uniforms to sign people in and out of a scene."  
  
He looked up at her sharply. "How'd you know where I was?"  
  
"I read your report. I knew better than to trust what you'd tell me," she added.  
  
He tried to glare at her, but wound up staring out the window again instead. "I could have run faster."  
  
"Oh for pity's sake. Tim, seriously. There wasn't anything you could have done that you didn't do. You got the evidence back. You did what you could to shore up the case. What happened after that wasn't in your control," she told him.  
  
"I could have been nicer," he said softly, still looking out the window.  
  
That gave Calleigh pause. Tim was generally gruff and sarcastic with people he didn't know. Hell, he was gruff and sarcastic with people he did know. He liked people at arm's length, even people he called friends. "It may not have made any difference."  
  
"He was scared," he said.  
  
"Still. Tim, you cannot blame yourself for someone else's actions. You didn't have anything to do with that boy killing himself. You weren't deliberately cruel. You may not have been all sunshine and light with him, but I know you. You didn't do anything to that boy," she said, reaching across the table to touch his arm.  
  
He flinched away. "Don't, Calleigh. It's my fault, ok? I could have, I should have..." He stopped, and pushed his plate away. "I'm not hungry."  
  
"Tim..."  
  
"If not for that, then for something else, ok? Something's my fault, ok? It's fine, I'm fine. I'll go to work tomorrow and be fine." He started to get up, but she reached out and stopped him.  
  
"Are you going home or are you going driving?"  
  
He groaned and slid back into the booth. "I don't know."  
  
"I know I made a deal, but really, Tim. Go home. Don't go wandering off tonight." This case was too far under his skin and it worried her. He got weird when he did a suicide. She was always half afraid that he wouldn't show up the next day.  
  
"I'm fine. I won't go driving drunk or anything. I don't, you know," he said, finally looking at her.  
  
"I know you don't. That's not what worries me," she admitted.  
  
He cocked his head at her with that unreadable expression on his face. "Danny Fisch's people won't find me. I wasn't mentioned in the news." That meant he'd checked at least, which made Calleigh feel a little better.  
  
"Still," she said. "Just, humor me, ok?"  
  
He looked away, down at the table, and back out the window. Finally, he said softly, "Cal, if I was going to kill myself, I'd have done it a long time ago."  
  
"Somehow that doesn't make me feel a whole lot better," she said. She paused, then asked, "You've tried, before?" He shrugged, and she knew he wouldn't answer. He never did when she asked him things like that.  
  
"I'm going home," he said finally. "If it makes you happy, you can even drive me. Ok?"  
  
"Yeah. I'll drive you," she said, pulling the napkin from her lap.They drove through Miami to Tim's house. It was a small ranch house a couple of blocks from one of the less populated beaches in a neighborhood that was just a bit rundown. She could see his bike in the carport and wondered if he'd let her drive him just to pacify her. She turned into the driveway and parked the car. He didn't move to unbuckle his seatbelt. She didn't say anything, just looked at him staring out the window.  
  
"I told her it was a paycheck," he said suddenly. "She was going on about watching Quincy as a kid and this being all she'd ever wanted to do and I told her that this isn't my life, it's just a paycheck."  
  
"Who?" she asked, confused. "Who are you talking about?"  
  
"Carrie," he replied.  
  
"Ah," she said. "I don't know why I said that." He was still looking out the window, apparently at nothing.  
  
"Just now, or what you said to Carrie?" she asked.  
  
"Either. Both. I don't know, Cal." He shook his head.  
  
She bit her lip. If he went inside, she really didn't think he'd stay. She knew he wouldn't sleep, and that's what he probably needed right now. But he was keyed up in that odd way that made her nervous. Leaving him alone wasn't something she wanted to do just now. She made a decision and pulled the keys from the ignition and undid her seatbelt. "Here." She handed him the keys and opened her door.  
  
"What?" he asked. He was confused, but her movement had brought him back to the car instead of being off wherever his head had taken him.  
  
"Switch me places and go on and drive if you've a mind to," she said.  
  
He moved as though he was sleepwalking as he got out of the car and walked around to get into the driver's seat. Pushing the seat back to accommodate his much longer legs, he put the keys in the ignition and started driving. He headed towards the freeway without thinking much about it. This was what it was like when he started driving. He didn't think, he just reacted. But the rhythm of the car and the pavement started to relax the coiled tension in his back as he headed out of Miami.  
  
Calleigh didn't say anything, but she hoped he wasn't planning on getting them totally lost. He didn't seem to be paying any attention to where he was going. She wondered how far out they could go and still get back in enough time to get some sleep before they had to be back at work. She wondered if he cared about getting home in time to sleep. Somehow, she doubted it.  
  
The radio was on low, but the car was plenty quiet enough for them to hear it. He'd slumped back against the seat, his elbow resting against the window, hand behind his head. His eyes were heavy lidded, but moved smoothly from the road to the mirrors to check on the few cars around them. Calleigh wasn't saying anything, just sitting quietly as he drove. He had almost forgotten she was there. They'd been driving for almost an hour and a half and they were maybe fifteen minutes from his one of his stopping points. There was a truck stop and he'd passed out there before without anyone bothering him. It wasn't the safest thing to do, but it was probably safe enough. Safer than falling asleep on the way back. He'd done that once on his bike, hypnotized by the lines on the road. He'd found himself jerked awake by the gravel on the shoulder and managed to avoid crashing into the guardrail. He'd stopped riding his bike out here late at night after that incident. At least if he crashed the car, he'd be a little more protected.  
  
Calleigh reached over to turn down the air. He blinked, realizing that she was still there. She was looking at him, he noticed. Without thinking about it, he started talking quietly. "When I was six, I got really sick. I had the flu and then scarlet fever all at once. I must have missed a month of school, at least. Marianne sent me a present to cheer me up. It was a crystal making kit, something Mom or Dad could help me put together if I was feeling up to it, and it would be something to look at when I was feeling bad. It was a little thing, but the crystals grew beautifully. It was really kind of cool to look at. When I got better, I took it to school for show and tell. My teacher put it on the table where we had some rocks and other science stuff so everyone could look at it. We were lined up for lunch or recess, I don't remember, but one of the kids who used to bully me deliberately knocked it off the table and it shattered. I was so mad I cried. It was from Marianne, you know? She wasn't around so much at that point, and when she was, it wasn't ever for long. My teacher sent the other kid to the principal's office, herded the rest of the class off to wherever we'd been going and then calmed me down. When I stopped crying, she took me up to the library and told the librarian I needed a book about crystals. The librarian gave me a book that showed how you could make sugar or salt crystals, I don't really remember. But I remember reading the directions and seeing that it was almost the exact same things we'd done with the kit. And I remember trying it, and the same thing happened. That's the first time I understood what an experiment was, that you could do it over and over and the same thing would happen. The crystals would always grow. The science would always work, it would always be true. Always, no matter what."  
  
He'd reached the truck stop and pulled off the freeway as he spoke. By the time he finished, they were parked in a space a bit away from the other vehicles. She looked at him, and saw that he was looking down at his hands. "The science is still true. The crystals would still grow," she said softly.  
  
"Yeah," he said, going quiet again. After a moment, he looked up and met her gaze for almost the first time the entire evening. "I'm tired," he said in a voice that sounded very small and very young.  
  
"Do you want me to drive us back?" she asked gently.  
  
It was a novel idea, having someone in the seat next to him that could drive him back home if he got too tired to get back on his own. He wouldn't have to curl up in the backseat and hope no one thought he was a good target. He nodded slowly and pulled the keys out of the ignition to hand to her. "Ok."  
  
"Ok. Switch me places," she said in that same gentle voice. He climbed out of the car and walked around it again. He stopped a moment to look up at the night sky. It was late enough and dark enough despite the lights of the truck stop to see the stars. He didn't get to see the stars enough, he thought sometimes.  
  
Calleigh readjusted the seat as he climbed back into the car. Neither of them spoke as she maneuvered the car back to the highway. There were signs pointing them back to Miami, she saw gratefully. She wouldn't have to ask him where they were. She glanced at the clock. It was nearing midnight, but they'd be home in about two hours. That would probably be enough time for a nap at least. She'd gone to work on less sleep before, she'd survive. A half hour later, she glanced over at him and found that he'd fallen asleep, his head resting against the window. She smiled slightly. He needed the sleep far more than she did. Sometimes she thought he ran purely on adrenaline and curiosity. He was more a scientist than the rest of them. It was what made her worry about him in this job. He needed to know why things were the way they were and more often than not the answers were too human. Too raw and messy and complicated. They weren't balanced equations. They lacked the symmetry of the crystals he'd told her about. The whys of this job could kill someone. He did fine with the evidence. It was just the circumstances that created the evidence that almost devastated him. She'd let him sleep. Adrenaline didn't have the staying power of curiosity, and he'd long since used his up today. She'd take him home, walk him into his house and put him to bed.  
  
And tomorrow he'd wake up, go to work and be fine. 


End file.
